Bang The Drum Slowly

by Mark Harris

  I was standing around shagging flies when Roberto Diego come running out. “Mister,” he said, “Dutch is wishing you,” and in I went.

  “Author,” said Dutch, “meet Mr. Rogers. Mr. Rogers, meet Henry Wiggen. Author, Mr. Rogers is a detective. Close the door and sit down. Mr. Rogers been down to Bainbridge and is now on the way up to Rochester, Minnesota, filling in some facts for me. However, you can save him a trip and the club some cash by filling in the rest of the story which Mr. Rogers begun.”

  “I will certainly try my darnest,” I said.

  “Tell him what you told me,” said Dutch, and Mr. Rogers begun.

  “I went and hung in Bainbridge a week,” said he, “and I developed the following information.” He had it all jotted down on little scraps of paper, and he kept looking at them. “I seen the following people,” he said. “On May 19 I seen Mr. Randy Bourne at the crate and box plant, and on May 20 I seen Mr. Dow McAmis at the Country Club, and on May 21 I seen a colored man name of Leandro.”

  “Never mind the facts,” said Dutch. “Get down to the details.”

  “Well,” said Rogers, “I was told that along about the end of October Mr. Pearson told these various people that he was not feeling so good and went to the hospital in Atlanta, and they told him why not try up in Rochester, Minnesota, and see what been ailing you. He drove up to Minnesota and returned in January with Mr. Wiggen, telling everybody he was cured of what he had. Him and Mr. Wiggen hung in Bainbridge a month and then drove off with a girl.”

  “My wife,” I said. “Big exciting mystery.”

  “I developed the information that nobody knew what was ailing him,” said Rogers. He folded his papers and laid them on Dutch’s desk.

  “Do you get paid for doing this?” I said. “Because you developed absolutely nothing that I could not of told you and saved you a hot trip down there this time of year, plus which you developed actually less than half the truth, which I will personally fill in now for Dutch and wind up the whole matter once and forever and get back out and drill where I ought to be keeping in stride.”

  “Do not stall,” said Dutch.

  “I actually developed a lot more than this but am only giving you the bare particulars,” said Rogers.

  “If you actually spoke to anybody worth the while,” said I, “you would of learned that Bruce has this rotten habit of running off to Atlanta maybe once or twice a month. No doubt you developed this much.”

  “Well, yes, as a matter of fact I did,” said Rogers, “but I did not think it worth mentioning.”

  “Because as a detective you are from hunger,” said I. “No need telling you where he went in Atlanta. Everybody knows. And you know what you sometimes pick up in them places, which he did and which he rather not have them treat in Atlanta nor anywheres else near home for fear of it getting back and troubling his mother with her heart trouble. He was ashamed. You no doubt developed the information that when he went up to Minnesota he took along his fishing and hunting gear though when he got there found all the rivers 9 feet deep in ice. He checked in, got himself shot with a few miracle drugs, flirted with the nurses, checked out, met me in Cannon Falls, went hunting, changed his mind, and back down home again.”

  “Goddam it,” said Dutch, and he flung open his door. “Diego Roberto! Run out and get Pearson in here.” Then he picked up the phone and called Doc Loftus. “Come up here,” he said, and the 2 of them wandered in about the same time. “Take down your pants,” said Dutch. “Are you over the clap yet?”

  “Yes sir,” said Bruce. “Long ago.”

  “Check him over,” said Dutch. “All I need is the clap running through my ball club.”

  “Do not forget to write that letter,” said Bruce to me, standing there while Doc checked him over.

  “What did you do for it?” said Doc.

  “Got shot with miracle drugs,” said Bruce.

  “He looks fine to me,” said Doc. He went over and washed his hands.

  “Should I head out and develop this information further in Rochester, Minnesota?” said Rogers.

  “Stay with it,” said Dutch. “Some things have yet to be explained.”

  “While I am here I might as well write out a bill,” said Rogers.

  “If you charge more than $1.50 you are a swindler,” I said, and I went out whistling.

  That night I wrote the letter, saying, “Dear Sir, please send me a change of beneficiary form for my insured, Mr. Bruce William Pearson, Jr.,” and his policy number underneath, and I showed it to him and slid it in the envelope and told him I would mail it this instant before I forgot, and I done so, sending it up to Holly.

  Cleveland moved in, and we took 2 out of 3 and they moved out and St. Louis in, and we split 2 with them, Friday night washed out, and we went west 3 games to the good.

  I pitched the first afternoon in Chicago and was really my top, which was a good thing, too, because the power was off. It is usually always off in Chicago because the wind in from right plays hell with Sid and Pasquale and Vincent. You might as well stay home some days as buck that wind with left-hand hitters. Sid only hit one home run in Chicago all year.

  The second day Dutch moved Pasquale back to Number 6, moving Canada up to 3 and Coker to 5 and lifting Vincent altogether and playing Lawyer Longabucco in left, and then finally how we won it Bruce hit a home run in the eighth, batting for F. D. R. who relieved, the first home run Bruce hit since Friday, July 25, 1952, according to the paper, and the first home run he ever hit in the pinch, a high and gliding type of a drive that started out too much towards left-center but then got hung in the wind and washed over towards left, and in. Gil Willow-brook mopped up in the ninth.

  But Thursday you couldn’t of bought a breeze, and we sat around in the clubhouse going through the old routine where the first fellow says, “I wish I was dead,” and the second fellow says, “Why do you wish you were dead?” and the first fellow says again, “Because I will go to hell.” Somebody is supposed to ask, “But why should you wish to go to hell?” I asked it myself one day in St. Louis my first year up, and I had to buy everybody a coke.

  “I wish I was dead,” said Gil.

  “Why do you wish you were dead?” said Herb.

  “Because I will go to hell,” said Gil, and everybody waited, and now Wash Washburn said, “But why should you wish to go to hell?”

  “Because hell will be cooler than Chicago,” said Gil, “and that will be cokes all around,” and Wash looked at Perry, and Perry said, “I guess it will, Wash,” and it was, and Dutch come out and give the lineup, Goose catching, and Goose said, “Dutch, I am hot and tired.” He was breathing, and he looked beat.

  “Very well,” said Dutch. “Brooks will catch,” and he told Doc fork out some heat pills, and Doc brung them out and we passed them around and the boys swallowed them down with their coke, all except me and maybe 3 or 4 others. No doubt they are good pills, green for heat, white for weariness, blue and yellow for pain, depending where the pain is, for many of the boys been taking them for many years, and they sometimes help, and others been taking them rather than hurt Doc’s feelings, but I believe they are all the same pill colored different. “Goose,” said Dutch, “why not hang in town over the weekend and meet us in Pittsburgh Monday?” and Goose said he would. He took his wife and kids to the beach and was pretty much a new man by Monday.

  I believe Dutch might of regretted it, but he never said a word. We lost to Chicago on getaway day, and then we lost 2 straight in Cleveland, the first time all year we lost 3 in a row, our cushion now skinned back to 1½ again, the power sometimes off and sometimes on and many people blaming Jonah, for even if it was on it was never on in the 8 spot, and Dutch benched Jonah and started Bruce, my day to work, warm but not hot, a perfect day for baseball and a great Sunday crowd.

  I was hooked up with Rob McKenna, a left-hander. I beat Rob in a 16-inning ball game one night in July of 52, Chapter 28 in “The Southpaw” if you wish to read it again, one of the ball
games of my life that I remember best, but he beat me after that more than I ever beat him, or anyhow beat the club, not me. We simply never hit him. He has an overhand fast ball that fogs through with a kind of a downspin, almost a sinker, and even if you hit it you hit it in the dirt. He fogged it through that afternoon like always, and we had holes in our bats, and it made me mad because I was working good and hate to see hard work end up in the lost column. Bruce said, “He sure burns them through.”

  “Damn it,” I said. “Do not sit there admiring him. Think how to hit the son of a bitch.”

  “I am thinking,” he said, and I believe he must of been. He had his chew up between his front teeth, where he keeps it when he is thinking, not chewing but only thinking, for he can not do both. “I been thinking I can never hit his fast ball but can whale his curve a mile.”

  “I rather see you whale it than talk about it,” said I.

  “I could whale it,” said Bruce, “if I knew when it was coming, or else I am meeting it late.”

  “Then study him,” said I, “and figure out when it will be coming.”

  “I am keeping a book,” he said.

  “What does it say?” said I.

  “It says he will throw me a curve after 2 strikes and try and clip the corner, and if he misses he will throw me still another a little closer in.”

  But Bruce went on hitting in the dirt all afternoon, and the boys as well, all but Sid. Sid parked Number 20 in the stands in the fourth. He was now 2 behind Babe Ruth, and we went into the eighth trailing 2–1, Canada opening it with a single, Vincent Carucci trying to push him along but bunting foul twice and finally fanning, and Coker topping a fast ball and sending a slow roller towards short which if it been any faster would of been 2 for sure, but was slow, Coker beating the relay to first, and Dutch said, “Lawyer, if Pearson gets on you hit for Author.” Bruce took the 2 strikes, and he leaned in and waited for the curve, and it come, and it was maybe an inch or 2 out, and Bowron called it a ball, Cleveland beefing hard, and the crowd as well, and I remember Dutch crying above the sound, “Good eye, Pearson,” Bruce leaning on his bat and waiting for Cleveland to calm, and then stepping back in, his jaw working and saying, “Rob McKenna is only a country boy like me, or else a country boy from the city,” Rob looking down at Coker on first, then looking in, and kicking and pitching, Bruce counting on the curve, set for it, swinging, and when he hit it you knew it was hit and never looked for it, Coker tearing for second full speed and then slowing and jogging on around and waiting at the plate for Bruce, and shaking his hand. Longabucco sat down, and I took my swipes, looking for the 2 strikes first, and then the curve, and swinging on the curve, but fanning. The damn trouble is that knowing what is coming is only half the trick. You have still got to hit it. We took it, 3–2.

  Goose caught the rest of the way through the west, and things held up. We played 3 at night in Pittsburgh, and 2 out of 3 at night in St. Louis, and it was cooler. I knew Goose would not last the year, and I am positive Dutch did, too, but Dutch was now past worrying about the year. He was nursing things along day by day, now 2, now 2½, pretty much stuck with what he had. There was no use hoping for miracles. Catchers do not drop out of the sky. You have the people you have, and you know what you are up against, and all you can hope is your people will pull together, and if they do you will also get a little help from wind and weather and Mother Luck and the schedule and the umps and charity bounces.

  Goose brung his boy back to Pittsburgh with him, halfway through High School with pimples all over his face name of Andy, the first time in his life he ever been out of Chicago. Doc give him pills for the pimples, and he stood with us until around July 4, a nice kid, but tough, always trying to talk out of the side of his mouth and swearing like 90 when Goose wasn’t around. He drilled with us, all style but no results until Jonah told him one day, “Boy, catch the ball first and pose for your photo later.” Goose left him strictly alone on the ball field.

  St. Louis beat me 3–0. How can you win without runs? I had an 11–5 record when we started home from St. Louis Sunday night, but I actually never give it much of a thought nor stopped to think how close I was to the bonus clause. I know that nobody will ever believe me, so why I even bother to write it down is beyond me, but it is true. When your roomie is libel to die any day on you you do not think about bonus clauses, and that is the truth whether anybody happens to think so or not. Your mind is on now if you know what I mean. You might tell yourself 100 times a day, “Everybody dies sooner or later,” and that might be true, too, which in fact it is now that I wrote it, but when it is happening sooner instead of later you keep worrying about what you say now, and how you act now. There is no time to say, “Well, I been a heel all week but I will be better to him beginning Monday” because Monday might never come.

  CHAPTER 12

  WE GOT home from St. Louis very late Monday night. There was some kind of a wreck on the railroad, and Dutch yanked Van Gundy and Biggs off the train in Indianapolis and sent them home by air for the full night sleep. When we finally got there there was a letter from Holly, or I suppose you might say from the new Change of Beneficiary Department of the Arcturus Company saying the man in charge went out of town and wouldn’t be back for a couple weeks, clearing up some business in Oregon. Every 3 or 4 days Bruce said, “That fellow must be back from Oregon by now,” and I wrote another letter, and the reply come back saying he went from Oregon to Colorado, and things went on like that for quite a number of weeks. There was also a message in my box from Tootsie saying Katie called twice a day and she was getting tired hearing her voice, Tootsie was, and a note from a fellow name of Burton McC. du Croix offering The Mammoth Quartet a spot on a TV show the following Wednesday night, 100 apiece less his own 10%. I went up to Coker and Canada’s, for I could of used $90 about then, and they said, “Sure, tell Perry,” and I said, “You tell Perry because I am frankly not on very good speaking terms with him any more.”

  “Neither am I,” said Coker.

  “Why not?” said I.

  “It is nobody’s business but my own,” said he.

  “Then Canada must tell him,” I said.

  “Not me,” said he.

  “We will match coins,” said I.

  “Go ahead and match them,” said Canada, and I done so, and he lost, but he refused all the same, saying Perry give him a pain in the ass and he stopped speaking to him, coins or not.

  “It is all very sad,” said I. “The 4 of us used to be as thick as flies not many years back. I remember the good old days on the Cowboys. The whole club gives me the creeps. I am libel to wake up some morning not speaking to myself.”

  “Everybody is nervous,” said Coker.

  “Why not cut Perry out and call it The Mammoth Trio?” said Canada.

  “That is a good idea,” I said, “but I got a better one yet. Why not cut Perry out and Bruce in?”

  “He could not follow the music,” said Coker.

  “3 of us following the music is plenty,” I said. But we got nowheres, and they said, “Leave us sleep on it,” and I left and went down to Perry’s myself and knocked on the door, and Jonah opened it an inch and peeked around and said, “Oh, hello, Author,” and he left me in quick and shut the door. They were playing cards, the 4 of them, which Dutch said not to, and they said, “Pull up a chair, Author,” fairly friendly, all but Perry, and I played a couple hands though my mind was not on it.

  “Well,” said Perry, “when is the big wedding?” They all laughed.

  “Pretty soon,” said I.

  “No doubt he will invite us,” said Perry. I said he would. “I just bet he will,” said Perry, and they all laughed again.

  “If you boys would give him a chance you would find out he is not such a bad fellow,” said I. “In fact you would do me a great favor not ragging him.”

  “He deserves it,” said Keith.

  “Why?” said I.

  He only shucked his shoulders and looked at Perry. They are good
boys, never purposely nasty except they get kicked around a good deal where a white fellow might not. I knew that if they knew what I already knew and carried it around until everybody I met I felt like spilling it they would of buddied up to Bruce, or if not buddied up at least laid off, good ballplayers all of them, though Keith can not go the distance and will not learn from his betters, very effective for 3 innings at the most and then blows. Yet I did not spill it. Telling Goose was already too much. I kept expecting him or Horse to give it away any day, and I only said, “Why rag him about the wedding? It makes him feel good thinking about it. It keeps up his spirit.”

  “It keeps up our spirit ragging him,” said Wash.

  “What is wrong with your spirit?” said I. “You are a young fellow. What do you need your spirit kept up for so early in life?”

  “Never mind the lecture, Author,” said Perry.

  “I will leave,” said I.

  “Nobody said leave,” said Jonah.

  “Leave him leave,” said Perry. “He probably rather hang with his own anyway.”

  “With my own what?” said I. “I never expected I would hear such a remark from you.”

  “With Pearson,” he said, “and Horse and Goose, the lowest type scum of the earth.”

  “You are wrong,” said I. “Pearson has not got a nasty bone in his body, which if you ever give him a chance he would show you.”

  “He shown me plenty already. I seen going on 4 years of him, and enough is enough. I am not blind. Pearson would not give me the time of day if I was dying.”

  “He does not know it himself half the time,” I said. “When he cuts you dead it is only because he got nothing to say, not because he does not like you. I hung down home with him over the winter, and more than once I seen him give a big hello to folks along the main drag, colored folks as well as white, the same big hello.”